重见越南,修复创伤——论《在乡下》中记忆的视觉书写

Re-visualizing Vietnam and Repairing War Trauma: Visual Writing on Memory in In Country

越战是美国历史的一道分水岭,战败重挫了美国的国族自信与男性气概,成为了美国创伤文学的一条重要叙事线索。在小说《在乡下》中,鲍比·安·梅森成功地将越战创伤纳入重忆轨道,为老兵艾米特开拓了一条创伤修复之路。本文将依循"集体失忆"—"重‘见’记忆"—"演绎记忆"的路径首先考察集体失忆下战争话语的嬗变所导致的老兵身份降格;其次,本文将分析第二代创伤见证者如何"重见"越南,帮助受创者重返记忆之地并最终与过去达成和解,以期为南方文学的记忆研究提供新视角,并对视觉元素在当代文学创作与文学审美中所扮演的角色提出批判性思考。

The Vietnam War was a watershed in the U.S. history. Its defeat seriously frustrated America’s national confidence, constructions of American masculinity and came to constitute a recurring motif in its literature of trauma. In her novel In Country, Bobbie Ann Mason blazes a trail for Emmett, a veteran, to recover from trauma. Examining in turn "collective amnesia","re-visualizing memory" and "acting out memory",this essay first investigates the degradation of Vietnam veterans’ identity through shifts in the discourse of war and collective amnesia. Then, it analyzes how the second-generation trauma witness "re-visualizes" Vietnam and helps the traumatized return to the site of memory and reconcile with the past. In this way the essay attempts to propose a new approach to American southern literature and rethink the role that visual elements play in contemporary literary creation and literary aesthetics.